Doctor: David Tennant
Companion: Catherine Tate – Donna Noble
Others
Yasmin Finney – Rose Noble
Karl Collins – Shaun Temple
Matt Green – BBC reporter
Jamie Cho – Colonel Chan
Ruth Madeley – Shirley Bingham
Harley Mcevilly, Max Fincham – Lads
Jacqueline King – Sylvia Noble
Dara Lall – Fudge Merchandani
Cecily Fay – The Meep
Brian Herring, Phill Woodfine – Meep animatronics
Robert Strange, Stephen Love, Jordan Benjamin, Vassili Psaltopoulos – Wrarth Warriors
Isabella Carey – Soldier
Ronak Patani – Major Singh
Ned Porteous – voice of Zogroth
John Hopkinson – voice of Zreeg
Anna Martine Freeman – Chief Technician
Archie Backhouse – Sergeant
Miriam Margolyes – voice of the Meep
Directed by Rachel Talalay
Written by Russell T Davies, from a story by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons
Script editor: Scott Handcock
Produced by Vicki Delow
Executive producer(s): Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson
Music by Murray Gold
Running time 57 minutes
First broadcast 25 November 2023
Following his regeneration, the Fourteenth Doctor lands at Camden Market in London where he runs into Donna Noble, who still does not remember him. He also meets Donna's teenage transgender daughter, Rose, and husband Shaun Temple. An apparently crashing spaceship streaks across the sky, noticed by all except Donna, and Shaun drives the Doctor to its landing site in North London. Meeting with UNIT scientist Shirley Anne Bingham, the Doctor explains his confusion as to why he resembles his tenth incarnation and his re-entry into Donna's life, believing the two events are connected. Shirley sends in a UNIT squad to investigate the spaceship, only for them to be controlled by a blue entity. A friend of Rose tells her of an escape pod from the ship landing near her home and soon afterwards she encounters a small furry creature called the Meep.
Rose hides the Meep in the shed where she keeps homemade stuffed toys that she makes for her online business, but Donna discovers it just as the Doctor arrives at her house and is confronted by an angry Sylvia. Shaun's return home defuses the situation and together they learn of the Meep's history – it states it has two hearts, like the Doctor, and claims that the Wrarth Warriors are hunting it for its fur.
The UNIT squad and the Wrarths arrive, and a fight breaks out between them. The Doctor gets the Meep and Donna's family out, but realises that the Wrarth are not using lethal force. He holds a trial with the Meep and two Wrarths, with the latter revealing that the Meep's home world was afflicted by a sun that turned its entire species into vicious beings and that the Meep is the last of its kind, attempting to rule the universe. The Meep drops its kindly façade, kills the Wrarths and reveals that the possessed UNIT soldiers are under its control. It also threatens to kill the Doctor and Donna's family, but he suggests that there being two two-hearted aliens in London at once is part of the Wrarth plan and so the Meep accepts his suggestion that they all be taken hostage instead.
The Meep plans to escape Earth with its new soldiers at the cost of incinerating London. The Doctor and Donna's family are rescued by Shirley. The Doctor and Donna, the latter of whom is starting to remember her past, set off to stop the Meep. Trapped within the spaceship and running out of time, the Doctor is forced to reawaken Donna's memories, and the two manage to shut down the Meep's ship. To the Doctor's surprise, Donna does not die; with Rose's birth, Donna had passed down part of the Meta-crisis into her, awakening some memories of the Doctor within Rose, whose shed and the stuffed toys were unconscious imitations of the TARDIS and the aliens that her mother had encountered with the Doctor. The Meep is captured by the Wrarths, while Donna and Rose expel the rest of the Meta-crisis from their bodies.
The Doctor suggests Donna and her family visit Wilfred Mott. Donna spills coffee on the TARDIS, causing it to go haywire and begin to dematerialise. The Doctor remarks that the TARDIS could be taking them anywhere in time and space.
The Star Beast